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STA Blog

Adrian McKee

Adrian McKee

Week LII

November 15, 2022 By Adrian McKee

Week LII

GOV 312L US National Security

Most of what I did with this last week was getting a liiiiittle carried away with some stylized Canvas banners of a newspaper and… an old TV news reel?

It turns out the professor wants something more contemporary in terms of photo subjects, and presumably style, so I’ll be updating the studio backdrops and thinking of new Canvas graphics.

Tech STA Poster

This took priority on Thurs/Fri, let it be noted that I was only cutting out the student photos and putting them in. ALL CREDIT FOR ACTUAL POSTER DESIGN GOES TO LEILANI

Filed Under: Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Week LI

November 8, 2022 By Adrian McKee

Week LI

Flyer GSD360 for Spring ’23

This week, I started off with the original grid concept, at a tilt.

I also tried a tilt (shear), but didn’t love how the photos looked, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the time tilting every individual frame separate from the clip-masked photo.

My other idea was to manipulate the photo background and caption block separately, which led to this. I made the photos smaller, tiled, and gradient-mapped.

Further clarification led to keeping the bahausy geometric elements and simplifying the design, plus making a wider one for screens.

GOV 312L US National Security

Project: Course Graphics – GOV 312L US National Security
Client /Prof: Jason Brownlee
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Maddy K, Suloni robertson
STA team members: N/A
description/plans: TBA
To be completed: 12/5/2022

For this course, so far all I’ve done is draft some studio backgrounds. The professor wanted something that shows contrast between inconsistent points in American foreign policy, so the photos such as Rumsfeld greeting Sadam and the gulf war are juxtaposed. I played with sepia and greyscale, and various types of noise texture.

The studio team helped us test the backdrops, and we’re probably going with the noiseless sepia (now a purpleish-grey).

 

Filed Under: Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Week L

October 18, 2022 By Adrian McKee

Week L

Isn’t it weird that Roman numerals jump from XLIX to L? Why isn’t it IL for 49? I guess it’s to standardize the tens place. Anyways,

Fall 2022 STA Poster

As of writing, both of these are wrapped!

The video poster underwent some minor changes since last week – the strips have square holes now.

Project team went through many more iterations – about half of them within the last hour of crunch time Friday. Here’s a summarized chronology:

And the final cut:

Flyer GSD360 for Spring ’23

Project: Flyer GSD360 for Spring ’23
Client /Prof: Jette Gindner
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Maddy K, Suloni robertson
STA team members: N/A
description/plans: TBA
To be completed: TBA
This one’s exciting! My first real client graphics in a while: a flyer for a course on early German film, from the silent era to 1945. The idea so far is a grid of movie stills/posters, with one black rectangle for the course info, and then either slanting or rotating it. Not much to show… yet!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

XLIX

October 11, 2022 By Adrian McKee

Fall 2022 STA Poster

The video STA poster has gone through a few tweaks, but nothing huge. Mostly, the color has changed.

Meanwhile, I’ve started the project STA poster. This one was more unconventional, because one STA doesn’t have a photo available. My very first idea was… some sort of comic book pop-out effect?

I was told to tie in the team’s work/materials more, which I don’t know much about myself, but based on the logo it has something to do with paperwork and logistics, so I replaced the background with a stock photo. I also had forgotten the color shift, so… draft 2!

One big thing is that I need to redo the placeholder illustration. I was suggested to try vector graphics, which I’m not very good at, but I may be able to steal Lorena’s template.

Not a whole lot for one week, but the second poster has taken a bit of planning and communications. I also worked on more French slides, which I won’t note here yet, because most of it still needs to be redone.

Filed Under: Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Week XLIX

October 3, 2022 By Adrian McKee

Week XLVIII

UTFC – Green Screen: 5.4B Getting Around Town List

Most of this week was spent on the poster, but I did rework some older slides to have a number graphic and a superscript suffix after them. I tried to find stock photos with the numbers in them, and match the style.

Fall 2022 STA Poster

I started this week with a template (the top and bottom bars) and a late-submission photo, bringing the total from 13 to 14 figures to fit into this more limited vertical space somehow. My first thought was: shrink everything and do a simpler 2-legged zig-zag.

Because of the large amount of empty space, De’sha suggested I try something closer to the older zig-zag with 3 legs.

.Scrunching it up vertically actually made it somewhat more difficult to discern. I decided to try maybe…

A gradient shadow between the “wedges”? But there’s so little space between the STAs that it’s still barely visible. Then I started getting really crazy. Circular layout?

De’sha suggested making larger film strips and putting the photos inside, but my first attempt was too small and inconsistent. This was a bit of a process, with creating a useable vectorized film strip and cutting the photos out individually.

The next one was a little better, at least I think so, because I’m still waiting on feedback for it as of writing.

The layout itself has been the most time-consuming thing, so I’ve avoided touching the color scheme too much for most of these drafts, but this one gave me some time to actually test some stuff. I’m trying to keep it limited to the basic colors still, but give it as much flair as I can.

Filed Under: Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Week XLVIII

September 26, 2022 By Adrian McKee

Week XLVIII

UTFC – Green Screen: 5.4B Getting Around Town List

Same deal as last time – vocab list + Francophile city. This time, it was Tunis, and directions. Some of them were sort of abstract “nearby” so I kept it simple and tried to include cats.

Fall 2022 STA Poster

The big project this week. I started by arranging the photos all on one layout. This was tricky with 14 people, so I figured… a zigzag?

I wasn’t sure what to do from there, so I added some stripes to break it up, and a simple pink gradient overlay inspired by the lighting in the editing room. Also, a soccer field background pattern, to tie in the world cup theme..?

I got feedback to focus on the video theme, and not take the soccer thing ‘too literally’, so I went a new direction and replaced the stripes with a vintage film strip. I also used the palette of the film strip to give the rest of the poster a more vintagey color scheme.

Next was the team crest… I started this without guidelines and drew up a camera-shaped logo.

However, I wasn’t sure how it would fit well into the poster. The film strips didn’t leave much blank space, and I already had “VIDEO TEAM” on one stripe.

It was only after drawing this out that I got more guidelines and a specific template, based on soccer team logos.

I’m supposed to use green for the video team. I’m still experimenting with how I can reuse the camera graphic I drew, since I’m not sure what else to put in the crest.

STA Blog Caricature

One last thing: I drew this one last week but I just wanted to show it here. It’s an updated outfit from last semester.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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